The state of Maine overflows with traditional beliefs, customs and stories that have passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. That’s why University of Maine professors Pauleena MacDougall and Sarah Harlan-Haughey created a folklore minor for students about two years ago.
“I like to think of [folklore] as the intangible culture rather than the tangible,” Pauleena MacDougall, director of the Maine Folklife Center, said. “We have a beautiful Indian basket — that’s the tangible. So how do you make it? That’s the intangible.”
From myths, epics and legends to music, song and dance, the study of folklore is an attempt to understand others as well as ourselves. As a state, the minor made sense because of the richness of our own folklore. The university also was uniquely situated to offer the resources for this course of study with the Maine Folklife Center right on campus, whose goal is to “preserve, publish and provide public programming and engage communities in the vernacular arts and culture of Maine and the Maritime Provinces,” according to its website.
“Because we’re so resource based in this state, we have wonderful traditions. There are traditions of boat building, traditions of heating your home with wood, traditions of having a summer camp. People don’t realize that those are some things you don’t have anywhere else. Those things are Maine based,” MacDougall said. “All of those things contribute to what Maine is and who we are.”
Maine’s folklore rests on these traditions and the many cultures that have helped build and develop the state.
“[The Maine Folklife Center has] interviews with Italians who helped to set up Millinocket, Finnish people who worked in the quarries. We have many immigrants in this state from all over the world. They all bring their cultures with them and add to the richness of our state identity,” MacDougall said.
The folklore minor is unique in that it draws from various departments. Though primarily anthropology-based, students who minor in folklore can take courses in English, Native American studies, Maine studies and history, among many others.
From classes such as Franco American Women’s Experience to Folklore of Maine and The Maritime Provinces, courses offered to complete the minor span a wide range of topics. In addition to class requirements, students also must complete a folklore-related senior project in their major, a mentored folklore senior project or an internship in a folklore related field.
“This gives them a chance to do something really concrete and conduct research,” MacDougall said.
Perhaps the most important question still remains: Why does it matter to offer students an option like this?
“We have to understand who we are,” MacDougall said. “Studying our own folklore helps us to understand who we are. When we look at other people’s folklore we understand who we are in relation to others in the word.”
